


Kintsugi

by Metamorphine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Illustrated, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a healthy dose of jesus in your sex metaphors, absurd amount of space references, sex as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 19:53:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metamorphine/pseuds/Metamorphine
Summary: Most nights he wakes up to the birth of the universe in his bed. The pressure that’s made a home in his chest-- the one that flares up whenever he’s reminded that the space outside isn’t just painted on two-dimensional glass, that ‘cause and effect’ is an undeniable part of life that is not confined to just advancing plotlines, that sometimes things don’t have plots, they just are -- finally reaches boiling levels and pushes against the furrows where he’d been creased and worn with hopes of tearing through and diffusing into something bigger than his body could contain..He finds that the only thing that subdues his heart’s nightly urge to revert back to stardust is the strong press of limbs holding him tightly, willing him to stay a single piece of matter for just a little longer.. . .an astral description of Shiro, Keith, and rebuilding a universe one star at a time. Featuring moonstuck metaphors, pensive paladins, and sex as a coping mechanism.





	Kintsugi

**Author's Note:**

> Alternately titled “God Bless Gunny”  
> This was meant to be a lot of things, but I’ll just let it be what it is.
> 
> Art Links: [1](http://clandestineknight.tumblr.com/post/163875413604/for-kintsugi-by-metamorphine-for-the) / [2](http://clandestineknight.tumblr.com/post/163875415539/2nd-picture-for-kintsugi-by-metamorphine-for-the/)

* * *

* * *

 

Most nights he wakes up to the birth of the universe in his bed. The pressure that’s made a home in his chest-- the one that flares up whenever he’s reminded that the space outside isn’t just painted on two-dimensional glass, that ‘cause and effect’ is an undeniable part of life that is not confined to just advancing plotlines, that sometimes things don’t have plots, they just are -- finally reaches boiling levels and pushes against the furrows where he’d been creased and worn with hopes of tearing through and diffusing into something bigger than his body could contain.

The singular vastness of himself was never something he thought he would have to confront when he used to dream of being up in space. But now that he has faced not only the concept of aliens, but the reality of their vicious society and neronic enslavement, it seems laughable that the unknown that haunts him is the identity he has spent the past two decades exploring.  
  
He finds that the only thing that subdues his heart’s nightly urge to revert back to stardust is the strong press of limbs holding him tightly, willing him to stay a single piece of matter for just a little longer.  
  
When the gravity that binds his pieces together leaves, Shiro can count on Keith to hold them in one place until the switch flips and he can pretend he’s whole again. He can depend on fingertips that shouldn’t feel as soft as they do with their worn and torn pads spreading over his back and covering as much space as possible, reassuring him that he is a solid mass. He is together and complete, no matter how hard they tried to shatter him. The pressure stays, a humming in his veins that likes to remind him that space can be filled with more than stars and heat. The fingers press back. They trace the scars left on him, the ley-lines that pulse and remind him that he no longer has space of his own. When the Druids broke him, they made sure he was anything but empty. Even though his mind couldn’t remember everything he’d done, his body couldn’t forget. They had so kindly packed him full of an insecurity that was coagulation in his bloodstream, a subtle reminder of what he’d lost along with the physical one attached to his right bicep.

A palm soft not in touch, but in being-- so impossibly soft on this man that had been sanded rough since conception, the product of hiding this part of himself away, and maybe Shiro wasn’t the only one fighting not to become callous-- matched the pressure on his chest, forcing down until he could feel his heart pushing back and oh. He had forgotten again.

“Shiro?”

The rough voice brings Shiro back to himself and he’s reminded that without Keith, time would mean nothing in space. A second, a tick-- all meaningless. Forward momentum is cataloged in each contraction of his heart. Each one of them is driven by the battle they face, no longer tied to a single star that dictates when they can say it was enough. But it had been too much for him since the start and he swore that if Keith wasn’t there to bring him back to this plane, his heart would have moved on long ago, leaving him with nothing to hold him down.  
  
Lips stripped bare from worrying pressed to his jaw and murmured, “you’re here, you’re safe, Shiro, we’re safe.” It was a soft mantra, everything so soft in their downtime, an unspoken rule to combat how harsh their lives were. There was nothing soft about the Paladins of Voltron from an outsider’s point of view, but when the castle was dimmed, they could squint and pretend that they had soft lives. It was a universal feeling that could be seen throughout the pride. On the occasions where the universe was too much for them all, the common room became a haven for them to camp and just be soft together. He knows he’s not the only one remembering how easy it would be to just not when he watches Hunk play with Lance’s hair where it falls across his lap, as he watches Pidge curl up like a little cub at their feet and Allura quietly cup Coran’s hand between her two, eyes so soft with memory. Those times allow him to spread just a little, letting his atoms loose to settle his palm on Hunk’s shoulder and squeeze, everything so soft. He allows himself to watch Keith be gentle with someone else, his ungloved hands reaching over Lance’s legs to set Pidge’s glasses to safety on the table. It’s times like those when he lets the pressure go, lets his wounds crack open and the overwhelmingness flow out.  
  
Right now, it’s just the two of them, Red and Black, because there is more than one type of softness and the one he needs right now is something private just for them. As comfortable as he is being vulnerable in front of his pride, Keith is the only one who he can handle watching him completely break.  
  
Those lips haven’t stopped moving, nor have those fingertips stopped pressing at the parts of him he forgot he could feel. And please-- he wants to beg for that soothing pressure on his every molecule, inside and out. As those sliding palms sweep up from his heart and down his bicep, reminding him that the humming metal where it lands is also part of him now, he thinks please take the burden of being Takashi Shirogane from me.  
  
A shudder runs through him and he feels himself tense up as his thoughts follow the path of those fingers, drowning out the love being etched into his skin. Searing white Druid light burns out his vision and he is once again a network of nerves all alight and pleading as clean and capable sinew is severed.  
  
As his breathing escalates, so does the intensity in which those fingers circle, rubbing images that his mind catches to and clings.  
  
The gentle patterns are like following starlight and he reaches out to find those fingers and laces them with his own. Light pulses between them, and for a moment, he has enough clarity to say “I’m fine Keith. You can go back to sleep.”  
  
“You know that’s a lie Shiro,” Keith replies in a voice that has grown stronger in wakefulness as he shifts to hover over the man in his bed. They had taken to sleeping together after recognizing the numerous nights of Shiro wandering numb through the corridors in chase of some relief from his soul's endless breakdown could be mediated by a second conscience being there to reflect his own humanity. It was easy to lose himself when no one else was there to conceptualize him.  
  
The words from his throat remind him that breathing is a thing, so he takes a moment to settle the shuddering in his ribs, counting in squares in the way he was taught in order to acclimate to sparse oxygen. He finds himself in the hands intertwined with his own and the thrum of two distinct pulses resonating beneath their skin.  
Shiro brings their still clasped hands to his mouth in order to brush his lips against them. “Not technically. What’s another night of PTSD-induced dissociation compared to fighting in an alien gladiator’s ring or being strapped down as your arm is forcibly removed?” The mechanical limb that had been lying at his side now lifts to settle on the others hip and squeeze as he adds, “or waking up without my right-hand man there to kiss it all better?”  
  
The derisive snort that follows is expected and Shiro marvels at how routine this has all become. When Keith dips down to suck his bottom lip between his own in order to rescue it from where’d it’d been being worried between teeth, he finds himself wondering when he had fallen so off-course. Spending his nights being soothed by a man he once thought his academic satellite was never in his plan (not that literally being abducted by aliens and set up to fight to his death until he was finally able to escape with a heavy dose of trauma tagging along had been in the plan either, but if he has learned anything from space it is that plans are like the stars of a constellation: easy to outline and simplify when viewed through a telescope, but completely incomprehensible when up close in the thick of them).  
  
So now he focuses all of his forethought on where to drag his tongue because if he was going to be bound to the present, it was going to be a present in which he had a firm grasp on the man who would always turn on a dime to follow wherever Shiro’s trajectory took them, ready to face whatever impact was waiting.  
  
A fatigued moan escapes from Shiro’s mouth and Keith returns it with a weak laugh. The added shift when Keith moves to straddle him lower has his fingers kneading into the muscle of the man’s ass and his brain releasing the crippling fog that’d been hovering since he woke.  
  
A sex-drive was the last thing he ever expected to retain when he first started facing his nighttime habit of dissolving, but the rawness and pure physicality of rutting against someone he trusts so inexplicably turned out to be the most human thing he had ever felt.  
  
Keith runs his thumb over the cracked skin of Shiro’s bottom lip, wiping away the trail of saliva he left as he examines the other’s face. “You know we can always go back to sleep. We don’t have to do this.”  
  
“Don’t worry, I want this,” Shiro replies as he brings his flesh hand up to card through Keith’s hair. The desire in him is a simple thing that has his teeth aching in a way that feels vital. He brings their foreheads together before clamping his fingers near the base of Keith’s skull and giving a sharp tug. “I want you.”  
  
The sharp inhale that follows is punctuated by toned thighs squeezing hard at Shiro’s hips and teeth going back to retrace where lips just danced. Through sharp breaths, Keith warns, “just let me know if it’s too much. We can stop.”  
  
Shiro grinds up hard, intent on showing how okay he really is with the feeling of structure that permeates everywhere their skin meets. But Keith pulls away, one palm flat on Shiro’s chest and the other resting against his cheek. “I’m serious. I know you and you like to convince yourself that it’s fine when it’s not.” There's a soft pause as his hands tense up where they rest. Soft eyes look up at him and he forces out the breath that had been cowering in his windpipe. “Just. Don’t push yourself into going somewhere I can’t bring you back from.”  
  
The look in Keith's eyes is reminiscent of the when he first broke through the atmosphere and got a close up look of the universe. It was the feeling of seeing something he loved so vast and there and being hit by the sense that it could all go wrong. It’s a look he knows is warranted because it has gone wrong, so wrong. His mind had turned heated hands into restraints and concerned inquiries into interrogation that left him hyperventilating in their shared bed while Keith frantically checked for wounds before realizing what was happening. With an intensity he’s only seen in Keith, he’d watched the man immediately switch gears into half-remembered grounding techniques and shaky platitudes. While not perfect, it got them through it until he was himself enough to recognize the fear then that he sees in Keith’s eyes now.  
  
So he checks himself. He presses back at those cracks in his identity and finds the edges just a bit more aligned, the pressure alleviated enough to let him settle into something almost whole. There is still a fragileness to himself that has him overly aware of the soft sheets against his back and the breaths that fill his lungs, but he knows it, is familiar with this state of limbo where his body doesn’t quite mesh with the physical world. He is held in place by where Keith’s weight pins his hips, kept anchored to now. The physical urge to struggle, to escape, is subdued and he knows that if he let’s go of the reins just a bit, he can trust himself to stay in place.  
  
The action of arcing himself up until his forehead touched the other’s once more was then a simple act of faith. His muscles responded readily. Keith’s eyes as Shiro flexes his fingers against his scalp and says “I think we’re cleared for take off” have him questioning why he ever had the desire to be infinitesimal, how he ever thought he could be just another atom in the atmosphere when there was somebody who held him in such rapture.  
  
“Mega-thrusters are go?” Keith quips back, an exasperated fondness in his voice for the cliches they had fallen into using over the course of their relationship.  
  
When Shiro says “take me to the stars baby”, the tension finally breaks and he finds himself laughing, a comfortable warmth spreading throughout his chest where Keith’s fingers are digging in, pulling at the fabric of the shirt he wears to sleep. Rough lips are his again and the warm breath they share is safe, a known covenant. Anything he might have thought to say has already been heard.

They had gone through this many times, replaying the scenarios and testing each point, until they had finally charted a course they were both comfortable with. They were navigating an asteroid belt where each collision equated to immediate halts to assess damage through gentle words and hesitant hands. Hollywood would have you believe that romance meant that these things happened on autopilot and you'd breach the storm first try, not a scratch on you. But the reality is mornings hunched over coffee discussing the cosmic storm that was the human psyche with shaking hands clasped. It was the use of words like “cock” and “orgasm” in tones that implied ablation and Kessler Syndrome. It was the arms of their Pride when the mind was quick to forgive but the heart was not.

Though they are now at the point where when Shiro twinges at those exposed palms dragging against his nipples after they ruck up and discard his shirt, Keith pulls back and levels him with a gaze that tries to turn his expression into scrying stones, and all he has to do is respond with a clear “please” for it to melt and the contact to resume.  
The two’s insistence of wearing clothes to bed in case an emergency arose while they slept had never been wholly appreciated on nights like this, but he had to commend the opportunity it gave him to view Keith grasp at the mess of drawstrings between them and start the venerable act of removing every barrier that kept them apart. Shiro watches as the skin of the being above him is unshrouded and revels in the constellation of beauty marks that he moves to press his black-plated thumb into as soon as the flannel reveals it.

  
“You’re so beautiful,” Shiro breathes, a bare confession that has Keith pausing in his maneuver to get both men stripped to their ankles. A soft huff starts the shuffle up again as Keith kicks his feet and moves Shiro’s hands from his hips until they’re finally laying skin to skin and can feel each other breath gut-to chest-to throat.

Keith waits until the distance between their lips could be measured in prayers before he replies, “you sounding like that almost makes me forgive you for being such a pillow princess.”

“You know I’m glad to--” his words are cut off as the universe recenters onto the single point of where Keith’s lips meet with the pad of his right thumb. The heat churning along the expanse where the two make contact had distracted him from the implications of Keith keeping a hold of his dominant wrist until he could guide it to his mouth to be drawn between teeth. While not quite organic, the feeling of Keith pressing his tongue up to the pad and wetting it slowly is not lost to him. When he flexes his other hand, he feels it lightly restrained above his head. He is not complaining.  
  
He watches Keith remove the digit from his mouth, teeth lightly catching on the retreat, and marvels at how human it still feels, no grating sound elicited. Keith hasn’t broke eye contact as he slowly trails suckling kisses down his palm and wrist, deliberately waiting for Shiro to take a shaky breath between moving to his next target. Once he’s left a glistening trail of saliva from wrist to elbow, he finally pulls the prosthetic up to join its twin.  
  
“You were saying something?”  
  
He has to close his eyes to that self-satisfied look on the other’s face in order to take a few more steadying breaths, achingly aware of how aroused he is. How aroused they both are. There was no way to pass over that fact when they were pressed this close, pajama bottoms lost somewhere at the bottom of the bunk. “Just that you are the light of my life and that I am not helping you one bit.”  
  
“So nothing new,” said light of his life replies, voice hitching slightly at the end as he shifts himself up and starts to get some friction between the two of them.  
  
The feeling can only be described as a lot, and when Shiro jerks against the hands on his, needing to ground himself on something, Keith lets him go easily. The illusion was nice, but they both know better than to use any actual restraint in this situation. Shiro found that his hands are better fit to grasp onto Keith’s hips and keep them prone as he presses his own up to repeat the sensation.  
  
It brings out an ache that he feels in his teeth, a desire so much more base and tactile than stars, but god, he is seeing them anyway. You’d think the phrase “seeing stars” would lose its grandeur when stars are all he sees out the castle windows, but he has found that something being familiar does not inherently make it pedestrian. He can still feel awe at the commonplace.  
  
And he feels so much awe at the sound Keith makes, an unabashed moan that at one point in their relationship would have been smothered. He should probably be worried at the amount of religious iconography that comes to mind every time he finds himself on his back, but he can’t seem to care when Keith is gasping out hymns against his ear and driving nails into the meat of his shoulders. Soon, he promises himself, he will be on his knees giving this man the worship he deserves, because no god has ever given him the peace that the simple raking of nails from throat to thigh is giving him now. He turns his mouth to confess this into the crook of Keith’s neck, murmurs of love, devotion, complete adoration and beauty, nothing like his marred and marked and missing self and fuck, how did the shattered likes of him deserve someone like--  
  
A burning flash sears across his thigh and he comes down from orbit to Keith having pulled away with a hand hanging out to the side as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. He feels pinned to the mattress by those scrying eyes, a worry in them that doesn’t match up right with the flushed cheeks and mussed hair that frame them.  
  
“Shiro?” Keith's voice is steady and as the confusion ebbs away, pride washes in at the sure way he says, “Shiro we're on standby until you say so.”  
  
It takes a moment, but Shiro gathers the voice to reply, “I'm here Keith, I didn't leave. Sorry to scare you. Got lost for a bit, but I swear I didn't leave you.”  
  
Keith’s shaky exhale as he loses the tension in his arms and rests his head against Shiro’s says a lot. It’s never been a secret that seeing Shiro crumble into himself so intricately is hard on him, and that having to be the one to take charge and pull him out of the wreckage is harder still, but Keith’s nothing if not a fighter and he’s never found a battle he wouldn’t run headlong into for Shiro.  
  
Shiro wraps the other up in his arms and just holds him, letting their breathing sync and slow, a steady flow as they reorient themselves.“Did I ruin the moment?”  
There’s a soft scoff that he feels against his collarbone as Keith shifts to lay all his weight across the bed and Shiro. “I think the mission is salvageable.”  
Shiro laughs easily at that, a relieved sound that takes away some of the tension that had started building “It's so hot when you talk pilot to me.” He buries his face into Keith’s hair and inhales, grounding himself on the warm spot against his side. His arms relax and he idly starts drifting the heated metal of his fingers along the smooth expanse of Keith’s back, exploring the knobs of his spine, the valley of his waist, and the two dimples set right above his tailbone.

  
Keith squirms away from the tickling touch, hitching his leg up to get flush against Shiro’s hip. “I can't even tell if that's sarcasm. Your dick says it isn't, but I'm willing to ignore that for your own dignity.”

“A true gentleman.”

It was Keith’s turn to laugh and the rumble from where Keith’s chest presses against his own was a comfort like no other. It was so soothing to not only hear but also feel how comfortable he is lying together in this small bunk, even with being woken up on a near nightly basis by his tumultuous night terrors. If he could harness the stars and fashion himself a bright new mind, it still wouldn’t hold a candle to the liquid gold he feels running through him when he’s with Keith.  
Inspired, he ghosts his lips against Keith’s temple to get his attention. When he feels the other shift his head to look up, there is enough light for Shiro to see the soft smile playing on his lips and he doesn’t hesitate to see how it feels against his own. The response he gets assures him that this mission is indeed salvageable, and god, something as mere as lips on his should not invoke thoughts of combustion. He follows his thoughts into a tectonic shift, rolling onto his side and moving to fold over the other, but fingers pressing firm to his chest guide him back down.

Lips disengage to announce “nope” before surging back and rolling over until there was a warm body back on top of him and a strong hand gripping his thigh to hoist it over a hip and grind. “My turn to pilot, Takashi.”  
  
His response is cut off before it can start, Keith leaving him no space between them for a thought to form. Things like the clatter of a bedside drawer and pop of a lube cap are secondary to the duet of hitching breath as fingers deftly pluck his heartstrings. They resonate.

The heat has him melting, now a malleable substance to be molded by the fingers entering him. They push and pry, each press pulling him closer to his boiling point. When fingers are finally replaced by Keith himself, he is no longer atomic. He finds the colors of himself bleeding into the background and for once he can see the full painting. Starbursts of phosphene are swirling his vision and he finds patterns in them that reveal the meaning of existence. For a moment, he is cosmic.  
Then Keith starts moving, hands still gripping his thighs and body convex above him in a way that has his head bent in prayer as he rains a litany of praise-- and everything snaps into a singular feeling of bright.

Reality fades like film exposed to sunlight. The motions become obsolete as they bleed into each other, leaving only a great big mess of muzzy warmth that blooms in his chest and unfurls up into his head. It is an incendiary thing that engulfs him until his body is dense with it, hungry for the moment the friction finally sparks.  
  
Fire is in him and damn if this isn’t a cliche, but a heart going supernova isn’t something you ignore just because the comparison’s been made before. An inferno that leaves him hollow and breathless is nothing new, but the molten feeling ebbing into him is a kind of familiar that can only be ascribed to the touch of someone who has known him as the starry dreamer he was and the world-worn stardust he is now. Of course, the post-glow of orgasm would have anyone waxing poetic, but Shiro is convinced that the atoms he had woken to being flung asunder were finally finding their place and soldering into something corporeal. As his body settles into something new, something more aligned, he finds the oxygen returning and his eyes adjusting to the simulated dawn light bringing his partner’s face into soft focus. He is a sturdy in a way he forgot he could be as he brushes the sweaty mess of hair behind Keith’s ear and waits for those hyacinth eyes to peek open so that he can deliver them the kind of smile that entire galaxies are traversed for.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
They are a tangle of sweat, hair, and other unmentionable grossness, but Keith still takes his time curling a hand over his heart and kissing him oh so softly. His heart blossoms with the gentle emotions radiating from the other and finds himself back in his Garrison days, waking up to sunlight streaming in through the shack window and a clear knowledge of what could be. The memory is there in the pale light that signals the Castle is waking up and in the palms that are still so soft when they rest against his chest. It’s in the way his chest rises and pauses before falling, no doubt that it would reach its zenith again. It’s the faint noises of living coming from outside his door.  
  
Hope.  
  
This newfound clarity has him stretching out his muscles as if feeling his body for the first time. He aches in a way that feels well traveled, little bruises marking the points he’s been visited. The cracks and creaks of his joints settling into place seem almost symbolic.  
  
Keith huddles down closer to him, eyes stubbornly shut against the artificial light.“Glad you’re feeling better. Now let’s go back to sleep.”  
  
“Come on, you know we have work to do. The universe isn’t going to defend itself.” Despite his words, Shiro settles into the mattress, letting his hand run idly through Keith’s hair.  
  
“The universe is roughly fourteen billion years old. It can take care of itself for five minutes,” the man grumbles while patting Shiro on the abdomen, a subtle warning that he better stay right where he is if he doesn’t want a Galran blade level with his navel. Though he hasn’t seen it in a while, Shiro is certain it is always within arm’s reach, even at times like these.  
  
With Keith a warm anchor at his side, Shiro lets himself survey the room he is learning to accept as home. As hard as the Alteans try, their artificial light will never be the same as warm Earth sunshine, nor will the recycled air be a cool Summer breeze. But this small gray room is where he is safe and alive. This castle is where he knows someone always has his back, knows he can breathe without choking on the expectations surrounding him. It’s a place where he can turn his head and presses kisses to his boyfriend’s forehead until his nose wrinkles in annoyance without feeling at all guilty.  
  
A pounding comes from outside the door that has them both groaning into the pillow. They hear an obvious scuffle comprised of “Lance it’s too early for your caterwauling. The showers aren’t soundproof”, “excuse you, The Pussycat Dolls are iconic”, and “that unfortunate thing you call a face is iconic” before it’s cut off by more thuds and indecipherable shouting. It’s so very different from the nights he’s heard them crying, lamenting over lost families and lost homes. Even at this relatively early time, it’s a welcome relief to know he’s not the only one with a flower in his chest.  
  
Keith wiggles his toes against Shiro’s calf before slotting their legs together in an effort to hold him there, knowing what’s going through the other’s mind.“I can ignore them if you can.”  
  
Pidge’s screeching and Lance’s mocking rendition of “Beep” recede down the hallway, and Shiro just smiles.  
  
“Let’s go join our Pride.”

* * *

 

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“Kintsugi (金継ぎ?, きんつぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い?, きんつくろい, "golden repair"),[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.[2][3][4] As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

**Author's Note:**

> Artist: [twitter](https://twitter.com/EvinDERP) / [tumblr](http://clandestineknight.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Author: [twitter](https://twitter.com/messyghostie) / [tumblr](https://messyghostie.tumblr.com)
> 
> Fic Playlist: [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLucQL9O90sbh1NVFL84AZbwTYLAzBxig4)
> 
> I'll admit that I procrastinated and wrote most of this in the past week, so don't be surprised if you come back in a few months and the ending is completely reworked. That being said, thank you for reading the first thing I've written since 2012. Participating in the Voltron Big Bang event was a blast <3


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